The Latest in MLM Quack Products: the “cPRIME Bracelet”

Though there is no substitution for the actual demo, the video does the best job of showing what and how to do these tests. I will be there at lunch today with a bracelet and you can get these tests done. It will blow your mind and just might make you feel a ton better!

“XXXXXXXXX” was one of the boss’s adult and old-enough-to-know-better daughters. She’d gone from real-estate to MLM scam products, and she was trying to inflict these scams on her father’s employees (with his apparent blessing). I had a mail rule to dump anything she sends straight into the “deleted” folder after her last sales pitch for a “Molecular Full-Body Cleanse” (or some BS to that effect, complete with scammy infomercial-on-YouTube link).

Now it was the “cPRIME” technomagical confusomatic performance bracelet! Hey, these are almost scientifical, with a “chip” embedded in them that could make you run faster and jump higher… for only $100 a pop! Oh god, the smell of grift is in the air!

Here’s James Randi demonstrating the same kind of bogus “applied kinesiology” test on a “crystal weenie”:

With my co-workers diving to take the keyboard away from me, I fired off a reply, likewise to the “all employees” mail list:

Is “.All _______ Employees” intended as a spamming list for snake-oil sales?

Just curious about the policy on this…

Call it the product of utter exasperation.
There is a reason I never make it past 5 years at the same employer.
I’m coming up on the latest 5 year mark now.
I think it shows.

It took scarcely an hour to rack up a whole stream of “Man, you got great BIG balls! Way to go!” comments from co-workers. I wasn’t going for “rep” at all (though I was pleasantly surprised by their reactions). I was just tired of the bullshit. It was a sleazy sales-pitch to a captive audience, and workers shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of shit.

Maybe my morale is so lowered by this sort of either credulous or fraudulent “marketing” that I just don’t give much of a damn. Hell, I know it’s the boss’s daughter. So what? She doesn’t work for the company, so why is she bothering the staff with this complete bunkum? Even as a child, when my father took me to work I knew better than to annoy the other workers and try to lie to or cheat them. It has no class to do so as an adult, either. It is implicitly exploitative.

I noticed a little lump in my “deleted” folder today. Oh, boy! It was a snippy little retort from the boss’s family scammer “sales pro”:

From: XXXXXXXXX
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 9:07 PM
To: <mynamehere>

Subject: RE: check this out!

Sorry to have invaded your e-mail box. I’m sure I’m not the ONLY one that sends out an e-mail to the whole company. If you are not interested in Girl Scout cookies, tires and wheels, blue and gold sausage, or any of the other things people send out you can simply delete them and let the owner of the company worry about the policy.

Thanks!
XXXXXXXXX

That message hasn’t been read by me, right? The oozing of attitude and sense of entitlement is too thick to cut with a knife. So I had no reason to send this reply, no matter how hard it was to practice restraint:

I don’t feel “invaded”, XXXXXXXX, only mildly annoyed at being distracted from my work. It is your daddy’s in-box, technically, and if he wants to let you sully his good name with your sorry-assed sales pitches he is within his rights, no contest there.

I’m sorry you lack the quality of self-reflection required to tell the difference between your own mercenary exploitation of your relationship with your father and school fund-raising, animal rescue, spiritual invocations and so forth between employees of a company, but you’ve apparently been raised a spoiled brat and are now a spoiled adult brat. Don’t change! I love you just the way you are.

I have openly asked what the policy is on the use of the company mail system to pitch scam products to employees. No reply so far, so apparently there isn’t one. I’ll be kicking off my own line of designer voodoo dolls, herbal nostrums, and “Magic Chicken-Bone Headbands” in the near future.
Watch for the “All Employees” email so you can get in on the ground floor!

For the record, I’m dropping it here, venting it on the blog and nothing more. If my own daughter were to pull a stupid stunt like this at my company… trying to exploit my employees and destroying the bond of trust, etc, well, it just wouldn’t happen again . But I am surely NOT my boss.